


Bargain Basement Legacy

by ciaconnaa



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Gen, but like it's 10 years in the future, it's a good time, like sort of, there's a vintage shop!, there's some fluff there's some humor there's a heart to heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-16
Updated: 2019-10-16
Packaged: 2020-12-17 05:01:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21048728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ciaconnaa/pseuds/ciaconnaa
Summary: “No.”The word spills from his mouth without half a thought right after Morgan pulls back the curtain with dramatic flair. “You barely even looked,” she grouses.“Spider sense,” he uses as an excuse. “I could sense the danger.” But this time he gives pause and actually looks over her outfit choice: a green monstrosity with unflattering sleeves. “You look like a radioactive lime.”Morgan swears before she disappears back into the dressing room.or;Peter takes Morgan shopping for her Halloween Homecoming dance. It's only a little chaotic.





	Bargain Basement Legacy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [seekrest](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seekrest/gifts).

> the spooky title: the ghost in the mirror  
this is not optimal posting time. I have no patience tho. so enjoy.

Peter takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly as he and Morgan walk into _ Nuclear, _a hidden gem of a vintage shop located in his very own borough of Queens. A gust of cold air follows them and Morgan presses more snugly to his side, even shoving one of her hands with his in his pockets.

“Your hands are ice, kiddie,” Peter laughs, taking both their hands out. He huffs out two mouthy breaths to try and warm them up before he pretends to hack up a loogie. “Spit and shine?”

She whines, pulling her hand away before her eyes go upward. The old building has astronomically high ceilings for a shop in New York City. There’s various clothes, paintings and weird knick-knacks hanging above them. They all put a smile on her face. “Oh, _ sick. _ Ooh!” She peels herself away from his side to start rummaging through the nearest clothes rack, stuffed to the _ brim _with vintage dresses. While he knows that all of the clothes aren’t necessarily vintage in the truest sense of the word, Morgan still manages to pick up a disaster that was definitely made in the 80s. “What about this one?”

Peter pulls a face. “You’ll look like a linebacker with those shoulder pads.”

Morgan rolls her eyes but otherwise puts it back on the rack. She continues to browse, but has the better sense to keep her mouth shut instead of soliciting his opinion; dresses in various levels of heinous get draped over her arm as they go down the racks. 

He picks his own selections - some subtle, some _ ridiculous - _and hopes she’ll humor him. When they have enough choices Peter runs over to the bright purple couch outside the dressing rooms and drapes himself across it as dramatically as he can. The shopkeeper, a somewhat elderly Korean woman, snickers as Peter’s selections blanket over him like his favorite duvet. “Dazzle me, Morgan.”

The dressing room is a locker sized closet with a giant drape that hooks on the other side to keep it closed. Peter gets the immense pleasure of listening to Morgan swear profusely while she tries to get it hooked and situated. When that’s said and done, he pulls out his phone to play a game, because he’s known Morgan most of her life, and she’s painfully slow at getting ready.

“No.”

The word spills from his mouth without half a thought right after Morgan pulls back the curtain with dramatic flair. Her face drops from a forced, bright smile to disdain and annoyance in the snap of a finger. “You barely even looked,” she grouses.

“Spider sense,” he uses as an excuse. “I could sense the danger.” But this time he gives pause and actually looks over her outfit choice: a green monstrosity with different, but still, unflattering sleeves. “You look like a radioactive lime.”

Morgan swears before she disappears back into the dressing room. “You know,” Peter yells as slips the curtain closed again. “Pep can just buy you a fancy dress. Send them to your house and everything.”

“What’s the fun in _ that?” _she complains. “I’d stick out like a sore thumb.”

Peter’s memory is fuzzy on the details, but, “Isn’t this a Halloween themed Homecoming dance, anyway?”

“Uh, yeah. Why?”

“Why aren’t you wearing a _ costume? _ Shouldn’t you all stick out like sore thumbs? Ugly sore thumbs in bad costumes? _ ” _

“It’s still a school dance, Pete. We don’t get a lot of opportunities to dress up. I’m not gonna ruin it by dressing up like some witch or whatever.”

“I think you mean: the _ other _kids don’t have opportunities to dress up. You on the other hand, you can go to some fancy Gala whenever you want. Tag along with me and Pep. Happy’s there as security, which is always insanely funny. You know, last time there was this commotion about -”

The curtain rips open again and Morgan looks annoyed again, but this time it isn’t a front to make a jab at him. It’s a subtle frustration, tinged with melancholy. “Look. I know I can go to galas and parties and dinners whenever I want. But those are_ \- _ those are mom’s and your’s and _ dad’s _ I don’t - I don’t _ belong -” _

She stops short with a harsh sigh, slinking against the frame of the dressing room like the wind has been knocked out of her.

Morgan and Pepper moved back to the city when Morgan was still pretty young, around first grade so she could attend school with other kids her age. Which means she’s officially lived in New York City longer than she has that cabin upstate. But every summer when she returns to said cabin, Peter knows it’s harder and harder for her to leave. She’s not like him. The noises of the city don’t feel like home to her. She misses the lake, the forest, her pathetic forts scattered around the yards. Morgan is like her dad in that she adapts and works through any adversity she’s faced. So living in New York isn’t necessarily an issue. And it’s not that she _ dislikes it _ per se. But she’s never been the showboat he was. The star studded life of an heiress isn’t her style. She’s smart, but the labs are too clinical. She likes building things with her hands in dusty garages. She’d rather fix old cars and boat motors than work on Avengers tech. She’s simple in her tastes. She likes Queens better than Manhattan, likes old buildings with floorboards that creak, likes finding clothes in _ vintages shops - _

“I’m doing a good job of _ fitting in _at school. I’m not going to wear a costume and blow all my progress.” Morgan already seems more herself, pulling back from her anxiety in a snap. “I will continue to be like everyone else. Walk the beaten path. Go with the grain. Etcetera, etcetera.”

Peter scoffs. “You’re not like everyone else in school. Trust me, I tried that shtick when I was your age, and it failed _ massively.” _

“Yeah, well.” She crosses her arms over her chest, pokes her tongue out to blow a raspberry. “I’m smarter than you. I know how to blend in.”

“Admitting that is admitting you aren’t like everyone else at school, Morgan _ Parker _.”

Morgan huffs at her public school alias, then stands straight, gesturing to her new outfit of choice to get back on topic: a silky looking silver slip dress that honestly looks like a nightgown. “What about this one?”

“No.”

Now she’s _ really _ annoyed. “What’s the big deal?” she plays with the top of the dress a bit, pulling it up by the straps. “Don’t lecture me on being skimpy or I _ swear. _I’m covered enough. Look.” She pulls her hands down to her side. “Passes the finger test.”

“I don’t care if you break _ dress code, _in that aspect, you wear whatever you want and if your principal has a problem he can answer to me.”

“You mean your wife.”

“Of course I meant he can answer to my wife,” he blurts out hurriedly, making her laugh. “Michelle is the scariest person I know.”

Morgan lets out another giggle before she does another spin. “So. Pray tell. Why is this a no?”

Peter scrunches his nose like he’s just smelled a sewer. “You can’t wear that because it’s ugly.”

Her jaw falls open in affront. “It is not!”

“You literally look like a utensil. Like, I dunno. A spoon. Maybe a spork.”

“God, you fucking suck,” her posture deflates, eyes rolling. “Where’s Ned when I need him.”

“BOSTON.” With an exaggerated flourish of his hand, he dismisses her and the jab. “On to the next one!” 

As Morgan disappears with yet another groan, Peter uses the opportunity to make more of his selections. He slips into the very back of the shop where he knows there’s a few costumes for sale. With the holiday season just around the corner, there’s even more in stock than usual, which is perfect. He pulls a few options: a poofy Victorian looking dress, a pirate costume and best of all -

_ “Oh yes,” _Peter whispers excitedly, stuffing his third option on the bottom of his haul.

He makes it back to the couch just in time for Morgan to come out in her next option: a flattering 60’s style shift dress, with the _ worst _print he’s ever seen.

“What grandmother’s _ couch _did you strip to get that dress -”

“_ Peter!” _

“Just!” he thrusts his arms out before Morgan can squeeze in another teenage tantrum. “Try one of these on.”

She takes a moment to look over the choices, and it doesn’t take long for the defeated exasperation to make its way front and center. “These are costumes, we talked about this, it’s not a _ costume _ dance -”

“You don’t have to pick them. They’re just for fun.” He tosses the dress over her head. “Who doesn’t want to be Marie Antoinette?”

She pulls it off, making her hair go frizzy. “Probably Marie Antoinette considering she was _ beheaded.” _

“Oooh scary,” Peter says, voice shrill. “How about Elizabeth Swan?”

“Who?”

“What the..? It’s from Pirates of the - okay, forget it, I’m old I guess -”

“You got _ that _right -”

“Would you just try them on?” He tosses the pirate costume over her head. “I’m getting bored watching your definition of good style.”

“You wear t-shirts with _ science puns!” _She pulls the dress off her head which reveals Peter’s third and final pick: 

An Iron Man costume.

“You are a _ mega _dork,” Morgan complains, voice flat and eyes void of any happiness or light. It’s a somewhat cheap costume, he can feel the fabric between his fingers. Peter probably wore one just like this when he was eight or nine and Iron Man was still as dazzling and important as he is today, ten years after his passing. 

But Morgan regards this costume with a caution she hasn’t shown the other pieces. Her finger grazes the cheap finger, tracing patterns along the printed armor, stopping to rest across the arc reactor around the chest. She’s heard the stories, seen the pictures: but Morgan has admitted in the past it’s hard for her to imagine her father with something so high tech in his chest, keeping his heart beating.

_ It’s hard to imagine his heart ever needed...help _she had said.

“Just try it on,” Peter says, using his quiet, Big Brother voice. “It’s only for fun.”

A disagreeing noise rumbles from the back of her throat, and it’s enough to make him cackle. She throws the other costumes back at him but takes the Iron Man one and slips back into the dressing room.

When she emerges moments later, Peter is overwhelmed by how silly she looks, as well as how _ scary familiar _ she looks. Of course, the costume is cheap, it doesn’t look like the real thing, but it’s somehow close enough. And Morgan - with her brown eyes, dark hair, the way her mouth quirks to the side - it’s _ scary. _

It’s scary how much she looks like him.

“You look like I just walked out in a wedding dress,” Morgan jokes, but even her voice is a little thick. Peter doesn’t say anything as Morgan walks over to the full length mirror. "Don't get all sappy on me," she says gently. "It's just a costume. It's not real."

Her reaction is discrete, but Peter sees how her mouth parts in the faintest gasp. She sees it, too. And he wonders…

He stands behind her, a hand on her shoulder as they stare at their reflections in the mirror. He tries to sound as casual as possible when he asks, “Do you ever think about putting on the real one?”

Morgan lets out a deep breath, some of the tension leaving her shoulders. Her mouth quirks into that classic Stark smirk. “Every day.”

Peter does not expect that answer.

“Not that seriously,” she clarifies. “I don’t think. I dunno. It’s complicated.” A pause. “I remember,” she stops again with a long sigh and a shaky smile before she continues to look at the both of them in the mirror. “When I was real little, and we lived at the cabin? Dad kept the rescue suit in the garage. I stole the helmet _ all _the time. Played make-believe that I was Iron Man, too. That maybe one day I might…”

She tilts her head and smiles even more broadly. 

“Not anymore. To put on that suit now?” she whispers. “Feels like an unwanted sequel. No one can live up to what he did,” Peter briefly glances at his scuffed up sneakers; he knows that struggle all too well. It took him a little while to realize he didn’t need to live up to Tony to be great. “And…”

She bites her lip, looking torn.

“And?” Peter prods.

“I don’t know if he’d want me to try. Genuinely.” She finally looks away from the mirror, trying to catch Peter’s gaze from behind her shoulder. 

“Kid,” he sighs, rocking her frame back and forth by the shoulder. “You’re a good person. You’re cool, kind, healthy and as a bonus, pretty darn smart. He’d want you to be safe. He’d want you to be happy. But above all, he’d want you to be you and do whatever you thought was right.” Peter knows that she was so young when Tony died, but there isn’t a doubt in his mind he didn’t already believe his daughter to grow up to be someone that others can trust. If she fell off the map, he’d understand. If she died in a blazing glory trying to save the world, he’d be sad, but Peter thinks he’d understand that, too.

Morgan looks back in the mirror, her eyes taking in the full picture of her in the silly Iron Man costume. “...I still don’t know what I should do. You know?”

“Oh, I know.” Peter smiles. “But, you got your whole life ahead of you to figure that out. You’re just a kid."

"I won't always be a kid," she says softly, and some part of Peter feels for her. He was her age when he became Spider-Man. He thought he had to be an adult because he had powers to help. For Morgan, her legacy must sometimes feel like the heaviest weight on her shoulders.

"I know," he says just as softly. "But you'll cross that bridge when you get there. For now: focus on doing kid things. Like, going to your Homecoming dance. They’re pretty fun.”

She snorts, amused, and just like that, a weight is already lifted. The two of them communicate like the tides, emotions ebbing and flowing, never entirely losing their humor.

“How the hell would you know?" she asks. "You ditched yours.”

“That was _ one _time -”

“Twice! MJ told me about senior year.”

“Why is my wife such a tattle tale.” He shoves her giggling form out of the way of the mirror, and back towards the dressing room. “You get one more pick and then you have to try on _ my _choice.”

Morgan peeks her head around him at the pile on the couch. “Hard pass on all that.”

“Fine,” he surrenders. “I will pick something new and funky fresh for you to try on. Go.”

She slips back into the dressing room and this time, Peter tries to actually find a wicked cool dress that will make Morgan the talk of the town, while keeping some of the Halloween spirit of the dance. 

He feels he’s rather successful. 

“Okay,” Morgan announces from behind the curtain. “You have to give this one a _ real _chance.”

_ No _chance. “Fine.”

As usual, she doesn’t buy his bullshit. “I mean it.”

“Sure.”

“Like, I _ really _mean it.”

“Absolutely. Totally. You got it.”

Morgan pulls back the curtain.

Silence. For maybe like, _ three seconds. _

Then,

“You look like the personification of honey mustard.”

On God, Morgan actually _ shrieks _a little: a gasp of a noise strangled in the back of her throat. She tugs helplessly at her hair before she goes to tugging at the bottom of the fit and flare gold colored dress with lighter lace overlay. “Peter, you promised! This dress is just fine but now all I can think about is -”

Peter cuts her off by holding up his choice. “Compromise!” he blurts out.

Morgan stops mid-rant and gives Peter’s dress an honest assessment, which is more than he can say he did for her. “...Hmm.”

He beams. “I know that hum. That’s a _ Peter Was Right _ hum.” He shakes the dress back and forth. “Give it a go?”

She yanks the dress out of his hands and marches back into the dressing room. “Don’t think you’re forgiven!”

“I will be once you see yourself!”

Peter seats himself on the ugly purple couch and waits. Morgan’s reveal takes even longer than usual. If he had to guess, judging by her quiet swearing and grumbles, it’s because _ he’s right _ and _ she likes it _ and Peter is _ the best stylist in the world. _

“I don’t know how you pulled this off,” Morgan announces, coming out of the dressing room without fanfare. She heads straight to the mirror. “But congrats. Please don’t make me hear about it for the next week. I’ll actually rip my hair out.”

Despite her moaning and groaning, she stands with all the grace of a ballerina in front of the mirror. Which definitely means she likes it. She twirls left and right, letting the fabric of the black-lace tea dress sway about. 

“Look at the _ sleeves!” _Peter gushes, jumping off the couch to stand behind her. He picks up the fluttery fabric between his fingers. “Goth-chic. It’s very Wednesday Addams. Like. If Wednesday Addams went to Homecoming.”

That’s a comparison Morgan can, apparently, get behind. She actually smiles. “Well. It’s definitely MJ approved, then.”

“Oh, for sure.” He holds up his phone to snag a pic to text her. “You think she can borrow it when you’re done?”

Morgan’s hands go on her hips. “Who says I’m picking this?”

“I’ll give you 500 dollars if you wear this one to Homecoming.”

“You don’t have 500 dollars to spare.”

“I will after I use Pep’s card to make a withdrawal.”

“You’re the worst person I’ve ever met.”

Peter’s phone dings with a response from MJ. “She says she’s mad that dress wasn’t her wedding dress.”

Morgan barks out an ugly laugh, throwing her head back. 

Another ding, another text. “Give her the necklace in the background…” Peter mumbles, reading it out loud. When he lifts his head he sees that there’s a small jewelry table a few feet away. It’s all costume and bright with the exception of -

_ Oh yes. _

“Awesome,” Peter says, pushing past Morgan to snag the necklace off the display stand: a black spider necklace, with floating chains in the shape of spider webs. “Morgan, look -”

She whines when he shows the necklace off the palm of his hand. “Oh, you can’t possibly want me to be that _ cheesy.” _

But she lets him come behind her to put the necklace around her neck. It’s like the universe knew Morgan Stark was gonna wear this dress with this necklace. It matches perfectly. “You look so cool.” He winks at their reflections in the mirror. “An ode to Spider-Man.”

“How does your ego fit in New York City?” But she’s smiling an honest smile through the joke as she prods at the necklace. “But yes. Okay. I’ll admit, it’s pretty cool.”

“So you’ll wear it? To Homecoming?”

“Yes, I’ll wear it to Homecoming.”

“With your hair in little Wednesday Addams braids?”

“Okay, so, we’re gonna table _that_ idea.”

Peter holds his hands up in surrender. “I can live with that. Provided…” He rushes past her into the open dressing room to grab the Iron Man costume. “You wear this for Halloween when we go trick-or-treating. And!” he yelps out the last part when Morgan opens her mouth. “Yes. You are going trick-or-treating.”

“I’m a little old for trick-or-treating, don’t you think?”

“Me and Ned have been taking you since you were six. We aren’t about to stop _ now.” _

She rolls her eyes. “Fine. I’ll go trick or treating.” Of course she agrees. Who doesn’t love the greatest candy hunt life has to offer? “But _ you -” _she shoves the Iron Man costume in his hands closer into his chest. “Are wearing the Iron Man costume.”

Peter isn’t entirely opposed to that. He’d done it before, back when he was eight and Ben was still around but sure. He’ll do it again. However, if he’s wearing the Iron Man costume... “So that leaves you with…?”

She smirks. “Dibs on your Spidey suit. Duh."

Peter grins.

“Deal.”

**Author's Note:**

> I guess this fits in the impression sunrise universe, if you read that fic
> 
> also im going off the assumption that by this point in time, pirates of the Caribbean would be an older film in morgans perspective, and therefore she might not have seen it. 
> 
> peace


End file.
